Crypto tax in Germany from 2027: what does the draft actually say?

The plan is to change how crypto is taxed in Germany from the ground up. Under the ministry draft (Referentenentwurf) from the finance ministry, dated 30 September 2026, crypto assets you acquire from 1 January 2027 would be taxed like shares: a 25% flat tax on capital income (Abgeltungsteuer), however long you hold them. Whatever you acquired up to 31 December 2026 stays under today's rule and is tax-free after a year. From 2028, crypto platforms would withhold the tax directly.

This is a draft, not a law. This text is as of 27 October 2026.

I'm not a tax advisor. I read the draft paragraph by paragraph because my software will have to calculate by it from tax year 2027, if it goes through as written.

Where the process stands

• 30 September 2026: The finance ministry sends the ministry draft to the associations.
• 6 October 2026: The deadline for their statements ends.
• 14 October 2026: A cabinet decision expected for this day doesn't happen.
• 27 October 2026: The cabinet still hasn't passed the draft. No new date is known.
• After that: Cabinet, Bundesrat, Bundestag. The law is due to take effect on 1 January 2027, and withholding by platforms on 1 January 2028.

Don't confuse this with a bill from the Greens that wanted to scrap the holding period immediately. That bill failed in the Bundestag and has nothing to do with the ministry's draft.

Old and new at a glance

One date decides it: when you acquired a coin. The only coins the draft puts under the new law are those acquired or received after 31 December 2026 (§ 52 of the Income Tax Act (EStG), new version).

	Acquired up to 31 December 2026	Acquired from 1 January 2027
Legal basis	§ 23 EStG, private sales	§ 20 EStG, capital income (Kapitalvermögen)
Holding period	one year, then tax-free	none
Tax rate	your personal rate	25% plus solidarity surcharge (Solidaritätszuschlag)
Tax-free up to	€1,000 of gains a year, the exemption limit (Freigrenze)	not covered in the draft
Losses	only against gains from private sales	only against capital income
Withholding by platforms	no	from 2028, with providers in Germany

With the solidarity surcharge, 25% comes to an effective 26.375%, and a little more with church tax.

The word "Haltefrist" (holding period) doesn't appear in the draft, by the way. It says the disposal is "taxed regardless of any period" (fristenunabhängig besteuert), which means the same thing.

What a "Tauschkryptowert" is

The new law applies to "Tauschkryptowerte", literally exchange crypto assets. The draft takes the definition from the EU's MiCA Regulation: a crypto asset that is accepted as a means of exchange and isn't issued or guaranteed by any central bank or public authority. The draft's explanatory memorandum (Begründung) gives Bitcoin and Ether as examples.

Expressly left out:

• NFTs, security tokens and tokens that represent another asset. Whatever applies to the asset they represent applies to them.
• E-money tokens under MiCA. The memorandum itself says this affects "only a few" of the stablecoins.

That leaves two open questions:

• Stablecoins. USDC and EURC are issued in the EU as e-money tokens, USDT isn't. So a swap from SOL into USDC and one into USDT could fall under different law. The draft says nothing more on this.
• Memecoins and small tokens. Nowhere is there a test for whether a token is "accepted as a means of exchange". For Bitcoin that's clear, for yesterday's memecoin it isn't.

Three cases in euros

The figures are rounded and assume the draft becomes law as written.

Case 1: Old coin, sold in 2027

You bought 10 SOL for €1,000 in March 2025 and sell them for €2,000 in February 2027.

You acquired the SOL before 2027, so § 23 applies. You held them for more than a year, so the €1,000 gain is tax-free. The draft changes nothing for old holdings (Altbestand).

Case 2: Old coin, swapped in 2027

In February 2027 you swap the same 10 SOL for another token worth €2,000 instead of selling them for euros. You sell that token in 2029 for €2,500.

• The swap is a disposal of the SOL (paragraph 54 of the finance ministry's letter of 6 March 2025). After more than a year it's tax-free, as in case 1.
• But you acquired the new token in February 2027. The new law applies to it, with a cost basis of €2,000.
• In 2029 you sell it at a €500 gain. The holding period no longer plays any part: €500 × 26.375% = €131.88 in tax.

This is the point I find most important: every swap from 2027 turns old holdings into new ones. The old coin leaves the wallet on the old terms, and everything that comes back falls under the new ones. If you swap a lot on Solana, you'll have hardly any old holdings left a few weeks into 2027.

Case 3: Staking rewards on old SOL

You stake SOL you bought in 2024 and receive rewards worth €300 in 2027.

Today staking rewards are other income, taxed at your personal rate, with an exemption limit of €256 a year. Under the draft, rewards received from 2027 are capital income, even if the staked SOL themselves are old holdings. The memorandum says so expressly. The €300 would then cost 25% plus solidarity surcharge: €79.13.

Staking, lending and airdrops

The draft covers two kinds of income: gains from disposals and ongoing income. It counts "the provision of Tauschkryptowerte and participation in transaction processing" as ongoing income. The memorandum names classic lending, passive staking and "decentralized business models" for this.

The draft doesn't say what that means for individual protocols, for liquid staking, for lending pools or for running your own validator. It only makes clear that commercial income still takes priority.

Airdrops and bounties: Under the draft, coins you receive without giving anything in return get a cost basis of €0 (§ 20 Absatz 4b, new version). The memorandum says this moves the tax to the later sale. On that sale the whole proceeds are gain, and unlike today, it doesn't become tax-free after a year either.

Withholding from 2028 and the 50% rule

From 2028, crypto service providers with a seat or branch in Germany are to withhold the tax, the way a bank does on shares. That means providers as defined by MiCA and the Crypto Asset Tax Transparency Act (Kryptowerte-Steuertransparenz-Gesetz). Because no euros change hands in a swap, the provider may sell part of your coins to cover it.

For a wallet of your own, Phantom or Solflare for example, nothing is withheld. The gains are still taxable and go in your tax return. In 2027 nobody withholds anything, so the whole year goes through the return.

The rule with the biggest consequences is in § 43a EStG, new version. A platform often doesn't know when you bought a coin or what you paid, because you bought it somewhere else. In that case it uses the details you give it. If those aren't used:

• the coin counts as acquired after 2026, so as new holdings, and
• 50% of the sale proceeds count as gain.

An example: in 2028 you sell Bitcoin for €10,000 on a German platform, and you bought that Bitcoin in your own wallet in 2022. Without your details, the platform withholds 25% plus solidarity surcharge on €5,000: €1,318.75. In fact the sale is tax-free. According to the memorandum, only a withholding of the correct amount settles the tax, so the money comes back through your tax return, a year later.

That makes records of purchase date and price worth real money, even for coins you've held for a long time. Which details a platform has to accept, and how it checks them, is left to a regulation that doesn't exist yet.

What the draft leaves open

The draft leaves some things to a later regulation and settles others only by cross-reference:

• Which coins count as sold first. Say a wallet holds SOL from 2025 and SOL from 2027 and you sell part of it: old holdings first, or new? Today, where coins can't be matched one by one, those acquired first count as sold first (paragraph 61). The draft empowers the federal government to set the "order of disposal" (Veräußerungsreihenfolge), but doesn't set it itself. For anyone with old holdings who buys more, this is the most important open question.
• Valuation. Which price applies, also by regulation.
• The saver's allowance (Sparer-Pauschbetrag). The draft doesn't mention it. Today it covers all capital income together. Whether and how crypto income would share it isn't in the text.
• Losses. The memorandum only refers to the existing limits. As the text stands today, gains and losses from old and new holdings land in two separate pots: a loss on a token bought in 2027 doesn't offset a gain on old coins, or the other way round.
• The burden on citizens and platforms. All the draft says on this so far is "[to follow]".

The law is to be reviewed after six years.

Why the state wants this

The memorandum says crypto assets are used like shares today because of their "speculative use, high liquidity and lack of wear", so they should be taxed like shares too. The draft names no alternatives.

The expected extra revenue, calculated for a full year:

Year	Extra revenue
2027	€70 million
2028	€175 million
from 2029	€350 million a year

From 2028, the larger part of that comes from withholding by platforms. The ministry itself calls the figures a "cautious estimate".

What this means for TaxMaxi

Nothing changes for tax years 2025 and 2026. TaxMaxi calculates them under § 23 and the BMF letter, as it does today.

For 2027 it comes down to something every holding in TaxMaxi already carries: its acquisition date. If the draft becomes law, the report for 2027 separates old and new holdings and calculates each under its own law. I'll build that once the text is final, and not before.

I'll keep this page up to date until the law is passed.

What's changed

• 27 October 2026: Added where the process stands: still no cabinet decision. Added three questions: how high the tax is, when it comes and what applies to purchases in 2026.
• 23 October 2026: First version. The cabinet decision expected for 14 October didn't happen.